Shadow Hunt

by Melissa F. Olson

  Meanwhile, the wolves—except for Will—were in wolf form, prowling around the edges of the territory. They were bouncing around a little, and I figured they must be excited about this additional chance to change into their wolf forms, when it wasn’t the full moon. They steered clear of me, and vice versa. Mostly this was so I didn’t turn them human again, but I also didn’t want to tempt Shadow by dangling werewolves in front of her nose. Okay, fine: my ex-boyfriend Eli had turned furry so he could lead them, and I was pathetically grateful to stay away from him.

  Jesse came over and plopped down on the bench next to me. “Kirsten needs me near you now,” he said. “She’s going to make sure there aren’t any humans still in the area.”

  I nodded, lifted my head off Shadow, and turned to face him. “I wish we had some of that ointment Rhys mentioned,” I said. “It would be really helpful if you could see the Hunt, too.”

  He shrugged. “There just wasn’t enough time.” He had draped one arm along the back of the bench, and now he lifted his hand to smooth back my hair. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay. Tired, but okay.”

  A beat, and then he said, “How are you doing . . . about earlier?”

  I squirmed, still surveying all the activity in the park. “Um. On that matter, I would say I am doing exceptional.”

  “No regrets?” he said, and I stopped watching the witch crowd and turned to find him studying me.

  “No regrets,” I said softly. He gave me a quick, chaste kiss, and then it was back to waiting. Everything took a lot longer than I’d anticipated—but then, there was no sign of the Luparii yet. I only hoped their prep was taking as long as ours.

  I felt a vampire hit my radius, and Dashiell nodded to us as he and Beatrice sat on a nearby bench. A few minutes later, Kirsten and Hayne sat down, hands clutched together. Will appeared out of the shadows and loomed against a nearby tree. His eyes were red. “You okay?” I asked. He had been late to arrive because he’d been talking to Sashi.

  He just gave me a look. In a low voice, he said, “You should have told me.”

  There was no reason for that to sting, but it did. “It wasn’t mine to tell.”

  Will just shook his head and stared into the darkness, like he was too angry to even look at me. I decided to shut up.

  We sat there like that for a few more minutes, just waiting. It occurred to me that this had never happened before, the seven of us together in one place at the same time. Usually it was smarter to divide your resources—and Dashiell himself rarely joined in a fight. Actually, now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure this group had ever faced a straightforward fight before.

  I sat up straight and looked around. The park was full of small groups of people talking in hushed tones. I knew if I expanded my radius, I would encounter witches, vampires, and werewolves of all ages and strengths. This was our community, brought together to face a common enemy.

  It was kind of nice, if you didn’t think about the part where we might all die.

  Around midnight, Dashiell flinched suddenly, lifting a hand that was already holding a cell phone. He read the text and looked up—right at me. “The spotter to the north,” he said, standing up. “They’re here.”

  Chapter 44

  I pulled in my radius, and Jesse and I ran to the corner of the wedge, through the gate leading down to the riverbed. Most of the Old World could see just fine in the dim light from the city—at least, for now—but Dashiell’s vampires had set out powerful camping lanterns along each bank, spaced every hundred feet or so. From the air we probably looked like a bizarre runway. I’d never really looked at the river at night, but the dry concrete bed seemed even bigger somehow, and alien, like the concave surface of the moon. It really was an enormous amount of space.

  I turned right, crossing the narrow bike path and climbing down into the riverbed with Jesse and Shadow alongside me. The other leaders followed behind us, out of my radius, as we’d planned.

  “You ready?” Jesse murmured.

  “Nope.”

  Then we heard the horn.

  What was the real term for it again? Oliphant. I had expected something sort of flutey, but it sounded more like a hollow foghorn with a sense of dread. I thought it was a little loud, but all around me, I saw people drop to the ground, covering their ears. Jesse and Shadow seemed unaffected, but when I turned to look, even Beatrice had fallen to one knee. Dashiell was bent over her, looking worried. Will’s hands were clamped over his ears. Kirsten’s lips were moving in some sort of protection spell.

  Then the sound finally faded, and I faced forward again. Before anyone could speak, I heard a galloping sound, like hooves striking concrete. Hooves and claws.

  It sounded like a whole horde of them, ominous as fuck, and my stomach turned into a rock. What if I was wrong about all this? What if we were all just lined up here waiting to die?

  Then they came around the bend, and into the light of the farthest lanterns. The Hunt rode toward us as a single organism. There was no jostling for position, no veering off course, no confusion. They moved like an enormous, rolling black wave: terrible and inevitable.

  Beside me, Jesse said something low and scared in Spanish. The people of the Los Angeles Old World, God bless them, held steady, waiting for a signal from me.

  My eyes went to the horses first, because . . . well, the horses were horses the way that Shadow was a dog. They were all ink-black, their hides covered in pebbled armor, galloping and snorting like something out of a nightmare. I didn’t know much about horse breeds, but they looked like Clydesdales or something similar. Each one probably weighed twenty-five hundred pounds, and despite the dim light and the distance, I could see that their hooves set up little sparks on the concrete, like metal ax heads. There were too many for me to count quickly, but probably close to twenty.

  “Oh, shit,” squeaked Kirsten’s voice behind me.

  “What are they?” I heard Hayne ask her.

  “Hellhest.”

  It didn’t sound like English, but it was as good a name as any for the equine equivalent of bargests.

  I couldn’t make out much about their riders, because all the lights were sitting on the ground, but running at the hellhest’s feet, I saw a pack of terrifyingly massive black dogs.

  Bargests. Five of them.

  I recognized an Irish wolfhound mix and a couple of Great Danes, all with the trademark inky darkness of the spell. Each and every one of them was bigger than Shadow.

  And it was only in that moment that I realized what had happened to the people living on the edge of Sunken City. Permanently changing dogs into bargests and horses into hellhest would require a human sacrifice . . . for each one. Which meant that something like twenty-five humans had been killed, and judging from the bedrooms I’d seen, some of them had been children.

  I felt righteous anger build up in my rib cage. The humans of Los Angeles weren’t technically under my protection, but that didn’t mean these assholes could show up and kill entire families in my fucking town.

  I stepped forward, and when the Wild Hunt was a hundred yards away, I held up my hands in a stop gesture.

  Truthfully, I wasn’t sure they were even capable of stopping. The law of inertia didn’t seem to apply here. But the leader pulled on his reins, and the entire group pulled up short behind him.

  I walked forward.

  Only now that they were close could I make out anything about the riders. Dressed in black robes and metal masks, they were both terrifying and glorious, like something out of Guillermo del Toro’s personal happy place. The leader moved his snorting, stamping hellhest closer, but stopped a good twenty yards away from me. He had a massive sword slung onto the saddle. They all had swords, but only his seemed to emit its own gentle glow.

  “Dashiell?” I said over my shoulder. “You’re up.”

  The vampire came up behind me and slowly passed me, stopping ten yards from the silent rider.

  Then I closed my eye
s and pushed my radius out until it encompassed the entire Wild Hunt.

  It felt . . . astounding. I was used to Shadow’s power, and this felt similar, but magnified by the sheer number and size of the different animals. Something still felt wrong, and it took me a moment to realize that I hadn’t actually broken the spell. I’d only subdued it, like holding your foot down on a cockroach. The magic was still there, so powerful that it staggered me. Jesse appeared beside me, putting out a hand to subtly support my elbow.

  Dashiell was talking, trying to negotiate, but I couldn’t focus over the intensity of the Wild Hunt magic. “Scarlett?” Jesse murmured, glancing down at me. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. I looked at the riders, who had instantly transformed back into humans. They were all blinking and looking around with obvious disappointment. Their black robes and masks had disappeared, revealing regular street clothes. The majority of them were women, which shouldn’t have surprised me—statistically, nearly all witches are female. I just never expect women to do the really evil stuff.

  The Wild Hunt’s leader was, of course, Aldric, now dressed in jeans and a red button-down shirt. There was black cloth showing under the shirt, and I figured he was also wearing Kevlar. Like the others, he blinked a couple of times, looking around, and then a smile spread across his face. “Intoxicating,” he said, lifting one hand from the reins and studying both sides of it. “Just as I hoped.”

  I forced myself to tune him out. I had to figure out what why the Wild Hunt spell hadn’t broken. I closed my eyes again so I could pick out the different sensations that were swirling in my radius. It was hard to separate and identify them, like picking out different ingredients in a smoothie. Only the magic was trying to blend together into a fucking force of nature rather than a delicious beverage.

  My eyes popped open again. The witches didn’t feel like witches. That was the answer. Whatever magic drove the Wild Hunt was the same substance that all witches used—but Kirsten and her kind channeled magic, pulling it out of the air and letting it run through them. These Luparii witches had done something different. They’d summoned the Wild Hunt magic into themselves and kept it there, something no one was supposed to be able to do. So they felt less like witches and more like magic incarnate: densely concentrated and borderline unstable. This was stronger than witch magic. It was elemental.

  And it was exhausting. I could do it—I could keep them human—but for the first time in my life, nullifying magic was slowly tiring me. Then I realized that it wasn’t just the riders, their hellhest, and the bargests, although that was plenty. It was also the sword, Durendal, hanging at Aldric’s side, and something else. There was something on Aldric’s person that felt practically radioactive.

  Jesse squeezed my hand. The conversation had been getting tense. I tuned back in.

  “You need to leave my town now,” Dashiell said to Aldric. I had to admire the vampire. He was currently in my radius, but he spoke with such bracing authority and command that even I kind of wanted to get a plane ticket out of there.

  Aldric just smiled. His street clothes should have looked comically weird against the black, unearthly hellhest, but the old man looked completely at ease on its back, like he’d been riding horses since birth. I recognized the witch flanking him on his left. It was Petra Corbett, her spine perfectly straight as she smirked down at me from her horse. I managed not to spit at her, but it was a close thing. “Why would I do that?” Aldric said coolly. “Because of the connard?” He gestured at me. Jesse’s hands curled into fists, and I had the impression that I’d been insulted.

  “If you want me to be human, you’ll have to be as well,” Aldric continued. “Le anneleur or no, my Hunt can decimate your pathetic numbers. And if she dies, the Hunt returns. No matter what you do, the spell will last until sunrise.”

  Dashiell said something back, but I had closed my eyes again, trying to figure out the source of that extra pulse of magic in my radius. So I never saw Aldric’s mount sidle a little to his left, making room for a rider in the back of the pack, holding a handgun. I did hear Jesse scream, “Scarlett, down!” . . . but not before the rider pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 45

  Jesse had argued with Dashiell for a long time about the gun thing.

  The Luparii had showed before that they were willing to use modern weapons, so Jesse’s feeling was that they should be prepared to raise guns the moment Scarlett turned them human. But Dashiell was old-school enough to think firearms didn’t have a place in the Old World, and he didn’t want to be the first one to break that unspoken rule.

  “Why does it matter?” Jesse had countered, back at the mansion. “They came to your town and are planning to kill your people. Who cares about archaic rules?”

  “It matters,” Dashiell had insisted. “Their whole objective is to come here and prove that our previous resistance was a fluke, and they can exterminate us whenever they want. People are watching how we handle them. If we resist with honor—or what passes for honor in the Old World—it matters to people. And if they beat us dishonorably, that matters as well.”

  Jesse kind of thought it was bullshit, but they didn’t have enough time to keep arguing about it. They’d agreed that Jesse would bring guns, but he wouldn’t take the first shot.

  Jesse was really regretting that compromise when one of the Luparii witches shot Scarlett in the chest.

  He was flanking her when she fell, and he managed to half-catch, half-lower her to the ground so she didn’t hit her head. Shadow immediately began nosing at Scarlett, checking that there wasn’t any blood and the bulletproof jacket had done its job. Jesse said a silent prayer of thanks that the werewolves and Shadow had taken out the Luparii’s snipers at Bronson Caves. If they had been with the Wild Hunt, they could have killed Scarlett with a head shot.

  Jesse really wanted to yell at Dashiell for his boneheaded “resist with honor” plan, but after making sure Scarlett was alive, the cardinal vampire had run straight into the fray.

  The gunshot was a signal to the rest of the LA community, too. Dashiell had never really thought talking to the Luparii would get them anywhere, but he’d suggested using it as a cover, so their own people could circle around to the back of the Wild Hunt’s group undetected. Now the Luparii group was surrounded. Several of them tried to run out of Scarlett’s radius, likely hoping to become the Furious Host once more, or at least circle around the LA people, but the sight of the snarling werewolves patrolling the edges kept them where they were. These people were afraid of werewolves.

  Most of the LA’s vampires and witches surged forward to clash with the Luparii—though a few of the physically weaker witches backed away under the bridge. Jesse couldn’t see the whole battle, but Dashiell was currently just a little ways in front of him, dodging Aldric’s sword as he tried to pull the Luparii leader off his mount without being struck by the hellhest’s terrible hooves. The beast—it was really the only term for it—seemed sort of confused, like it suddenly couldn’t remember what it was doing, but Aldric was spurring it on.

  “Scar?” Jesse said, looking back down at her. “I know that hurt, but are you okay?”

  She didn’t answer him. Her eyes were open but unfocused, like she was struggling to concentrate on something. He figured it had to do with her radius and the Luparii and stopped trying to get her to talk. She probably couldn’t hear him anyway: there were a number of people shooting guns on both sides. Several of Kirsten’s people were down, but the Wild Hunt witches must have been wearing Kevlar, too, which just seemed . . . unfair. Jesse kept his head down and made sure his body was between Scarlett and the gunfire.

  Then Shadow suddenly sprinted away from his side.

  She had been glued to Scarlett’s prone form, but when Jesse looked up, he realized that three of the bargests had broken off from the fight and were coming toward them in a triangle formation. All around him, the Los Angeles Old World was fighting the Wild Hunt, but Aldric ha
d likely told these animals to focus on Scarlett. If she died, LA would fall.

  Jesse helped Scarlett lay down on the ground and stood up, pulling out his Glock. He knew from experience with Shadow that gunshots couldn’t really hurt the three snarling bargests, but they would heal more slowly in Scarlett’s radius, and he could at least slow them down and scream for help.

  As a cop, Jesse had broken up two different dogfights, and he wasn’t eager to see the bargest version. The closer they got, the more Jesse’s hopes sank. Each of the new animals had a good fifty pounds on Shadow, and there were three of them. Still, Shadow raced toward them, obviously determined to meet them as far away from Scarlett as possible.

  He expected them to start circling each other like any other big dogs, with added power and healing, but instead Shadow charged straight at the lead bargest’s front leg. Jesse didn’t even see the attack so much as hear the leg snap. The new bargest snarled, but Shadow was already attacking another leg.

  Only then did Jesse realize what Shadow had figured out: the new bargests were obviously well trained, but they moved with hesitance, like they weren’t quite used to their new speed or strength. Shadow was experienced, and she was taking advantage.

  As she snapped a third leg on the lead dog, one of the flanking bargests closed her teeth around Shadow’s neck, which would have been a great strike if Shadow’s skin hadn’t been impenetrable. By the time the second bargest realized it couldn’t rip out Shadow’s throat, she had turned, somehow managing to catch and rip out the second bargest’s tongue.

  Oof. Apparently those weren’t invulnerable.

  Jesse winced, but he couldn’t look away. The second bargest yelped, pawing at her mouth, and the third approached Shadow more warily. Shadow planted all four feet and snarled, a deafening sound—and then the third bargest completely shocked Jesse by flipping over on its back, showing its belly.

  Slowly, the two injured bargests did the same, showing submission to Shadow, who began stalking around them in a circle, snapping her jaws. It was like watching an angry teacher trying to discipline her students in the middle of a hurricane. Finally, Shadow backed up—and two of the three bargests stood up and followed her. The bargest who’d led them before was still healing two broken legs, but it rolled onto its stomach and held its head in submission.